“…worship is the gift of grace. The Father has given to us the Son and the Spirit to draw us into a life of shared communion – of participating through the Spirit in the Son’s communion with the Father – that we might be drawn in love into the very trinitarian life of God himself.”
James Torrance, Worship, Community and the triune God of Grace, p. 25
We are not our own judges. We can neither justify our sin nor guarantee the righteousness of our good works. We stand before God only because, in the bad and the good, God stands for us, not simply wanting that we be good, but making it that we are. This is the gospel, the free humanity of Jesus given to be our very own, no judgement to fear.
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“Prayer is not a narrowly private activity; it is about your belonging in the body of Christ, and in the family of humanity. If you understand what is going on when you pray, then the world changes. And if in prayer you are gradually becoming attuned to the will and purpose of God, then the divine power that comes into you is bound to finds its outlet in this healing of relations. That is not to say that you pray in order to be a nicer person, or so that justice and reconciliation will happen. You pray because Christ is in you. And if that is really happening, then the sort of things you can expect to see developing around you are justice and reconciliation.”
Rowan Williams, Being Christian, p.73
“…the essence of prayer as the New Testament presents it is to let Jesus pray in you and take you into the very heart of God the Father. Just as Jesus empties himself out of love for us, we, in return, empty ourselves. We push away the selfish desires and the limiting images that crowd into our heads. We make room, we empty our minds and hearts, so that the love of God can fill them. So our prayer is that we may be made one with the will and the action of Jesus. And that means, says Origen, that when we pray and join in his activity we are doing a priestly thing, bringing the pains and needs of earth into the heart of God.”
Rowan Williams, Being Christian, p.67
“… in a nutshell, [prayer is] letting Jesus pray in you, and beginning that lengthy and often very tough process by which our selfish thoughts and ideals and hopes are gradually aligned with his eternal action; just as, in his own earthly life, his human fears and hopes and desires and emotions are put into the context of his love for the Father, woven into his eternal relation with the Father – even in that moment of supreme pain and mental agony that he endures the night before his death.”
Rowan Williams, Being Christian, p.63
“In the Eucharist we are at the centre of the world: we are where Christ, the Son, gives his life to his Father in the Spirit. And in the Eucharist we are at the end of the world: we are seeing how the world’s calling is fulfilled in advance; we are seeing ourselves and our world as they really are, contemplating them in the depths of God, finding their meaning in relation to God. And the job of a Christian is constantly trying to dig down to that level of reality, and to allow gratitude, repentance and transformation to well up from that point. ‘With you is the fountain of life’, says the psalm; and it is that fountain that we drink from in Holy Communion.”
Rowan Williams, Being Christian, p.59
“… self-awareness and repentance [are] completely bound up with the nature of what we are doing in the Holy Eucharist: the celebration and the sorrow, the Easter and the cross are always there together. And as we come together as Christians, we come not to celebrate ourselves and how well we are doing, but to celebrate the eternal Gift that is always there, and to give the thanks that are drawn out of us by that Gift.”
Rowan Williams, Being Christian, p.54
“… when the risen Christ eats with disciples it is not just a way of proving he is ‘really there’; it is a way of saying that what Jesus did in creating a new community during his earthly life, he is doing now with the apostles in his risen life. We who are brought into the company of the apostles in our baptism – which, remember, brings us to where Jesus is to be found – share that ‘apostolic’ moment when we gather to eat and drink in Jesus’ presence. And that is why, throughout the centuries since, Christians have been able to say exactly what the apostles say: they are the people with whom Jesus ate and drank after he was raised from the dead. Holy Communion makes no sense at all if you do not believe in the resurrection.”
Rowan Williams, Being Christian, p.45
Lift Up Your Hearts” (The Sursum Corda). A cry of faith introduces the Prayer of Great Thanksgiving. It has many scriptural resonances. Lamentations 3:41, has the exact words, while Psalm 24:7 & 9 are a similar dialogue. Then there is Christ’s command to “Love God with all your heart.” (Mark 12:30) while Paul speaks of Christians as being raised with Christ to see the things that are above (Colossians 3:1). These words, and the response “We lift them to the Lord”, can be found in the earliest liturgies we have. In the Latin West, Cyprian (250 CE) includes it. In the Greek East, Cyril of Jerusalem (350 CE) quotes it. Similarly it can be found in the earliest services in Syriac, Coptic and Armenian. In prayer, the faithful unite their hearts and minds with the Lord. Immediately worshippers are one with the faithful of both Old and New Testaments, and with Christians through all ages and around the whole world. In this is a cause to rejoice. But more: lifting our hearts to the Lord contains an element of living in the end time, when Christ is all and in all. Around the Lord’s table Christians dwell in time of a different kind. It is as if a liturgical Tardis has deposited worshippers at the heavenly banquet, when heaven and earth have passed away: a second cause for elation. This versicle, with the response “We lift them to the Lord”, is a profound act of faith and commitment.
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Advent and Christmas. The word “advent” comes from a Latin root meaning “coming” or “arrival”. The length of the season has varied at different times, but is now generally observed over the period of the four Sundays prior to Christmas and has been considered the beginning of the liturgical year since the 9th century. Advent was originally developed as a preparation for the celebrations of Christmas – the arrival or coming of Christ. The season, however, has also come to be a period of reflection on the church’s expectation of a “parousia”, or “second coming”, of Christ. Like all seasons of the Christian year, Advent and Christmas are caught between Easter and (the following) Good Friday. It is in the brilliant light of Easter that Christmas takes on its hopeful significance, and it is the journey from Christmas to Good Friday which fills out our understanding of the one who has come, who will be lost, and who we will meet again. Being seasons of Easter, Advent and Christmas are gospel-seasons of unexpected life out of death. Christian hope arises not out of our desperate need and waiting, nor from the natural potential of a newborn baby, but when both need and potential are flouted by a God who saves us by subverting our understanding of what we need and might become. Advent is not hopeless, nor Christmas optimistic, but are seasons for remembering a future we could not otherwise envision but towards which God draws us, sometimes in spite of ourselves, but always to our benefit and to his glory.
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